Satellite image of the inauguration crowds today

GeoEye made quick work of posting an image from Barack Obama’s Inauguration today. As promised, they snapped a photo at 11:19am and had it posted by this afternoon. The photo does a great job of capturing the mass of people that were in Washington. It was very interesting to see the the crowds formed — presumably to get in front of the billboard-sized screens that were set-up along the mall.

If you’d like to see it for yourself, Google has created a special overlay that includes the file.

I’m a bit disappointed there weren’t any easter eggs in there — it was well known that the photo would be taken at 11:19, and the festivities hadn’t really begun at that point. Still, given the relatively low quality of the photo it would have taken some serious work to make something that would have been visible. Plus, you never know when a plan like that can go bad.